Warning, epic post as its got two days of shenanigans to cover!
Thursday 16th August – Taking the waters
Nice sunny start to the day and a lovely view to wake up to from my awning.
This campsite is surrounded by the Yorkshire Dales and this is just one of the beautiful views from where I am staying. The site has a river running at the bottom of it (right behind my van) and you can hear the water constantly, which is actually quite lovely.
Today is exciting as my Mum is coming to stay for a few days 🙂
She will be catching a National Express coach from Milton Keynes to Harrogate, where I will be picking her up this afternoon. Thank you Dad for dropping her off this morning – I was there to meet her at the other end!
This means I need to drive into Harrogate, which is about an hour and a half away, but over the Yorkshire Dales, so I will be accompanied by spectacular views before joining the city traffic. I decided to take my time over the journey, so left about 10.30am to get there for mum’s coach arriving at 1.30pm.
It’s a good job I did as the traffic was pretty heavy in Harrogate and I went round the one-way system a few times before finding the correct car park I needed, so that I was close enough to the bus station to drop Mum’s bags off after she arrived (I won’t tell you how much the parking cost – ok, I will later!). I got parked and to the station at about 1pm. I sat on some benches waiting for Mum’s bus to arrive….
Yay – Mum’s here! She came baring gifts too, which was lovely. One was another fantastic homemade cushion for my van…. (and small memorial to Millie and Mollie)
And the other was from our lovely friend Mavis, who had handmade me this brilliant fabric pouch that I will use to hold various bits and bobs on this travel adventure. Thank you Mavis – it’s wonderful. I am a very lucky Lady.
Bags dropped off and gifts exclaimed over we walked back to the main area of Harrogate and went in search of a tea room for some lunch. We avoided Bettys as we tried to book in advance and couldn’t and we had both seen the queues to get in on our travels, and headed instead to another place just down the road.
The Harrogate Tea Rooms can be found on the second floor of the Westminster Parade shopping arcade on Parliament Street and the Gentleman who welcomed us was very friendly and happy to see us, as were all the staff. We ordered Yorkshire tea (of course) and perused the menu for something ‘local’ and decided on Yorkshire Rarebit – this is cheese and black ale sauce served on slices of toast served with homemade chutney and salad garnish. It was delicious. Everything was served on pretty porcelain or in a Union flag teapot and the general atmosphere was calm and relaxing – just as good as Bettys, if not better and not a queue in sight, just lovely service and good food.
After filling up on Yorkshire tea (is there any better tea? I don’t think so) we made our way to the Royal Pump Rooms to take in some local history. In 1571, William Slingsby discovered a well of water that had medicinal powers and from that moment the future of Harrogate as a spa town was secured.
The pump house started as a big puddle where an attendant named Betty Lupton dispensed water, for a small charge, for around 60 years. As popularity grew, the pump rooms were built and made more ‘splendid’ for the crowds, and on one day 1,500 cups of water were sold in one morning!
The rich and famous came from miles around to ‘take the waters’ and from around 1660, new hotels and other spas began to pop up, as well as temporary shops of luxury goods to sell and hosted dances were held in halls around the town. There was a description of a daily routine shown in the museum – sounds quite nice!
The lovely lady guide showed us the well and boy, could you smell the sulphur! Health and safety rules meant they are no longer allowed to give us samples of the water – can’t say I was that upset about it once I’d smelt it! The museum wasn’t very big, but the guide made all the difference to bringing the building and its history to life and there were also some of the old spa equipment on show, like the peat baths and water pressure showers. People didn’t just come to take the waters, they came for treatments too and there was a video playing of some of them, including patients with their hands and feet in water as nurses put electric currents in the water to aid circulation – can you imagine anyone suggesting that now!?
It was a fascinating place and a great way of absorbing some of the history of this lovely place. Next we walked past Bettys (that still had a queue to get in) and took a quick look in their shop. The prices?! It was very pretty, but glad we found somewhere a bit different for our lunch.
Time to make our way back to the car to make the trip back to the campsite (the parking was over £5 for 4 hours people!!) and after an afternoon of dry weather, it began to drizzle a little, which was a little disappointing, until we got closer to the campsite and we saw this….
Mum treated me to dinner out at a local pub (full of walkers – very busy around here considering it’s in the middle of nowhere!) where Mum got up to her usual mischief of spilling coke down her sleeve and across the table, her tall glass making strange ‘plopping’ noises when she took a drink and getting chocolate sauce from her pudding all over the side of her face and giving herself a chocolate side-burn. You can imagine the hysterics all of this started – I can only wonder what the locals made of us!
Back to the van and I made mum help me with my jigsaw – after an hour we’d had enough (it’s a pretty hard one!) and went to bed. A day of local sightseeing tomorrow, and a date with a dog and man with big ears. Night!
Friday 17th August – It’s all about the cheese!
We woke up to grey skies, but no rain yet. We only have one full day in the Yorkshire Moors, so we need to fit what we want to do in to it! So, we left the campsite around 10am and made our way in to Hawes and went straight to the Wensleydale Creamery.
Anyone who knows me well, knows that my favourite cheese is Wensleydale with Cranberries and I was very excited at the prospect of trying out a few new types of cheeses and seeing how it was made.
We arrived and parked in their FREE car park (yippee!) and paid a very reasonable £3.95 for one adult as we had a leaflet with a 2 for 1 offer in it, and was told that the next demo of cheese making would be at 10.30am – perfect.
There was a nice little museum to look through as you made your way to the demo area that had details of the history of cheese making and evidence suggests cheese has been made since around 700 BC and that monks passed on their knowledge to farmer’s wives during the dissolution of the monasteries. It’s been made throughout the world ever since, by hand originally before machinery took over, and Wensleydale cheese has been around since 1897 when Edward Chapman, a local corn merchant began to purchase milk to make the cheese and opened the first creamery in Hawes. Dairy Crest was its next owners until 1992 when they decided to shut the creamery with a loss of 59 jobs, all local people.
Six months later, a team of four ex-managers, together with a local business man, completed a management buy-out and with help from 11 skilled workers, started it back up again – what a story! Now, they only use milk from local farms and employs over 200 staff.
Where did that saying come from?
In the olden days, many houses used to display brass plate around their fireplaces – the amount of brass you had was a clear indication of wealth. The more brass you had, the more ‘brass’ you had.
The demo was brilliant, taking you step by step through the cheese making process, though we saw it done in 20 mins and by hand rather than how it’s done in the factory, but it was very interesting and easy to understand. Next we went to the viewing gallery and watched the men create some cheese in the factory and then we went to….. THE TASTING ROOM.
OMG – these photos do not do the place justice! Cheese, upon cheese, upon cheese – bliss. Mum and I tried them all (so we could make recommendations to you dear readers, obviously) and also bought quite a bit to bring back with us! Our clear favourite was ‘Fountains Gold’ – if you can find it, buy it. But, make sure it is Wensleydale by checking it has the PGI symbol on it – that’s the only way you know it is authentic, made in Yorkshire Wensleydale. We had a coffee and some chocolate to try to counteract the cheeseyness of our morning and then set off to take a look around Hawes.
Lovely little village, that we made our way around and bought some crackers and other Yorkshire treats to enjoy for dinner tonight. More on that later.
Next we set off to look for a couple of landmarks I’d found on a map that I thought would be interesting. The rain and mist had set in by now, as you will see from these photos!
We visited;
The Buttertubs – It was a miracle we found it and we only did as I saw a fenced off area at the side of the toad and went to take a look! The Buttertubs Pass is a high road that winds its way north from Simonstone near Hawes towards Thwaite and Muker past 20-metre-deep (66 ft) limestone potholes called the Buttertubs. It is said that the name of the potholes came from the times when farmers would rest there on their way to market. During hot weather they would lower the butter they had produced into the potholes to keep it cool.
We then went for a drive through the moors and stopped off at a few picturesque places to take a look and take some photos….. what lovely weather for August!
Ribblehead Viaduct – You can just about make out the massive viaduct I wanted to see! The viaduct carries the Settle to Carlisle railway line and is an impressive sight. Probably looks even better in the sunshine!
Did you know – that the stone built buildings you see in fields in the Dales, that look like they are abandoned and sometimes falling apart, used to be the milking houses for the farms? They are no longer needed as its all done with machinery back at the farm now.
Wet through, we decided enough was enough to set off back to the campsite to grab my laptop and kindle and retreat back to the creamery tea rooms for some light refreshments and to use their WiFi! Hence why I was able to upload Wednesdays blog entry. We also chose a film to download on Amazon to watch that evening, ‘The Post’ with Tom Hanks and Meryl Steep.
Back to the campsite to relax and eat our goodies after a quick training session from Dad over the phone on how to work the caravan heating – lovely and warm now.
Tonight we sampled;
- Some of our cheese
- Yorkshire butter
- Elijahs Yorkshire Chutney
- Yorkshire ham
- Quiche and bread from a local deli
This is what it looked like on our plates! Was all lovely, especially the ham which we bought off of the joint – delicious. We had also bought some local strawberries, Yorkshire made ice cream and some Yorkshire Parkin.
Full stomached we watched the film (very interesting once you go the gist of all the characters), washed up, sat down to read, or in my case write this blog, get rid of a few daddy long legs from the van (where do they come from?!) and now thinking about making up our beds for the evening. Moving on to Buxton tomorrow and hopefully WiFi again!
Thank you for reading the longest blog post from me ever!
One (wo)man and her (cara)van 
Yippee! Blog fix fulfilled. Say hi to Aunty Gill for me xx
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Cheese. Yum. That’s all I need to say!
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